Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre optic
broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on
everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking
one pay for it anyway?

I already have 3 phonelines into the house on long contracts.

It seems illogical to me for VM to avoidably add cost to their
product. If they wanted a higher price for their service rather than
bundling a compulsory phone they should simply increase the price.

After all "Enough is sufficient unto the day", and with 3 phones in
the house I have enough already without a fourth.

Derek G

On May 9, 3:27*am, Derek G. wrote:
Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre optic
broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on
everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking
one pay for it anyway?

I already have 3 phonelines into the house on long contracts.

It seems illogical to me for VM to avoidably add cost to their
product. If they wanted a higher price for their service rather than
bundling a compulsory phone they should simply increase the price.

After all "Enough is sufficient unto the day", and with 3 phones in
the house I have enough already without a fourth.

Derek G

They obviously want you to get rid of the other phones and use theirs.

Derek G. wrote:
Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre optic
broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

I am paying £74.50 pm for Sky HD TV (including movie channels), Sky
Broadband with unlimited downloads, and Sky Talk with free 'anytime' calls
and free calls to most European countries, USA and Canada (including line
rental).

Having Sky broadband also means that I can connect the router to my Sky Box
and get 'Anytime plus' with pages of movies and programmes available to
download and watch 'on demand' free of charge.

I reckon that's pretty good value compared with other 'packages' I've looked
at - and I've been more than happy with Sky broadband service as well.

VM TV may be cheaper than Sky TV - but then they don't have as many channels
and don't have quite a number of the more popular channels either. I
suppose, in relation to TV, a lot depends upon what channels/programmes you
watch.

--
Kev

Ret. wrote:

I am paying £74.50 pm for Sky HD TV (including movie channels),

Ye gods; £900 a year to watch crap telly and do a bit of browsing. Makes
me glad I find almost nothing to watch on TV.

--
Scott

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on
everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking
one pay for it anyway?

VM *do* offer broadband only packages but they aren't that much cheaper.
See eg
http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadban...-packages.html

I can only speculate on the business model but FWIW combined bundles
mean VM can quote lower prices for internet, comparable with what
competitors advertise. I guess potential new customers mostly look at
such figures. It is also not unreasonable given the cabling is the same
whatever package you take.

It may help to look at it another way. ADSL requires wires. A lot of
(young) people these days don't use wired phones, just mobiles. If they
want ADSL for faster/cheaper internet access they might say "why do I
have to pay for a stone age phone when all I want is internet?" AIUI
though they won't get one without t'other.
--
Robin
PM may be sent to rbw0{at}hotmail{dot}com

"Derek G." wrote in message
...

Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre optic
broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on
everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking
one pay for it anyway?

Its a marketing ploy..
They want you to use all their services so they can make more cash.
The phone service is actually a cheap thing to supply and people pay quite a
bit to use it so profits are high.

I don't know how you decided VM was cheaper than sky though, it isn't for
me.

Brian wrote:
Derek G. wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:53:44 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:


Its a marketing ploy..

It may very well be but AFAIAC it's costing them sales.

They want you to use all their services so they can make more cash.
The phone service is actually a cheap thing to supply and people pay
quite a bit to use it so profits are high.

I don't know how you decided VM was cheaper than sky though, it
isn't for me.


I pay £71 to Sky for the full bag of mashings inc. 1 HD box plus 1
sky+ box. + £9.00 /month for maintenance of the kit (free with
Virgin)

What's this £9/month for maintenance? I've never heard of that and
we've been with Sky for over 10 years (IIRC). If anything goes wrong
badly enough to need an engineer we just call Sky who, for a one-off
charge of £65, do whatever is necessary to get it working again,
whether that be a new dish, new cabling, new (refurb) box or whatever.

You've not been pestered with these sales calls (often from firms purporting
to be connected to Sky - but not actually) offering insurance against your
Sky box failing? I always send them packing. Like most such warranties they
are hopelessly uneconomical unless your equipment is failing several times a
year.

Last time my Thomson HD box failed, I paid the £65 and was provided with a
brand-new Amstrad box and also had the LNB replaced the dish realigned. I
understand that if you threaten to leave Sky they will come and sort things
out foc rather than risk losing a customer.

--
Kev

--
Kev

dennis@home wrote:
Its a marketing ploy..
They want you to use all their services so they can make more cash.
The phone service is actually a cheap thing to supply and people pay quite
a bit to use it so profits are high.

They advertise the line rental as relatively inexpensive (when you tot up
the bundle prices) but fail to mention that their call charges are really
high. And since they say you're paying '12.99' for the line rental, they
want to encourage you to cease your BT line to 'save money', when in fact if
you use the phone much it'll cost a packet in calls.

32p/min to Three mobile anyone? Calling from BT is 13p/min.

Theo

Ret. wrote:
Brian wrote:
Derek G. wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:53:44 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:


Its a marketing ploy..

It may very well be but AFAIAC it's costing them sales.

They want you to use all their services so they can make more cash.
The phone service is actually a cheap thing to supply and people
pay quite a bit to use it so profits are high.

I don't know how you decided VM was cheaper than sky though, it
isn't for me.


I pay £71 to Sky for the full bag of mashings inc. 1 HD box plus 1
sky+ box. + £9.00 /month for maintenance of the kit (free with
Virgin)

What's this £9/month for maintenance? I've never heard of that and
we've been with Sky for over 10 years (IIRC). If anything goes wrong
badly enough to need an engineer we just call Sky who, for a one-off
charge of £65, do whatever is necessary to get it working again,
whether that be a new dish, new cabling, new (refurb) box or
whatever.

You've not been pestered with these sales calls (often from firms
purporting to be connected to Sky - but not actually) offering
insurance against your Sky box failing? I always send them packing.
Like most such warranties they are hopelessly uneconomical unless
your equipment is failing several times a year.

Yes, I have, but (a) I've never taken them up on it as Sky give the service
I mentioned above and (b) the way I read it it sounded as though he pays
£9/month to Sky, not a third party.

Last time my Thomson HD box failed, I paid the £65 and was provided
with a brand-new Amstrad box and also had the LNB replaced the dish
realigned. I understand that if you threaten to leave Sky they will
come and sort things out foc rather than risk losing a customer.

--
Kev

"Brian" wrote in message
...
Derek G. wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:53:44 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:


Its a marketing ploy..

It may very well be but AFAIAC it's costing them sales.

They want you to use all their services so they can make more cash.
The phone service is actually a cheap thing to supply and people pay
quite a bit to use it so profits are high.

I don't know how you decided VM was cheaper than sky though, it
isn't for me.


I pay £71 to Sky for the full bag of mashings inc. 1 HD box plus 1
sky+ box. + £9.00 /month for maintenance of the kit (free with Virgin)

What's this £9/month for maintenance? I've never heard of that and we've
been with Sky for over 10 years (IIRC). If anything goes wrong badly
enough to need an engineer we just call Sky who, for a one-off charge of
£65, do whatever is necessary to get it working again, whether that be a
new dish, new cabling, new (refurb) box or whatever.

I can see that as the customer you might have something wrong with the dish
that is your problem, but as you are RENTING the box from them, if it goes
wrong they should always be repairing/replacing it FOC.

tim

tim.... wrote:
"Brian" wrote in message
...
Derek G. wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:53:44 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:


Its a marketing ploy..

It may very well be but AFAIAC it's costing them sales.

They want you to use all their services so they can make more cash.
The phone service is actually a cheap thing to supply and people
pay quite a bit to use it so profits are high.

I don't know how you decided VM was cheaper than sky though, it
isn't for me.


I pay £71 to Sky for the full bag of mashings inc. 1 HD box plus 1
sky+ box. + £9.00 /month for maintenance of the kit (free with
Virgin)

What's this £9/month for maintenance? I've never heard of that and
we've been with Sky for over 10 years (IIRC). If anything goes wrong
badly enough to need an engineer we just call Sky who, for a one-off
charge of £65, do whatever is necessary to get it working again,
whether that be a new dish, new cabling, new (refurb) box or
whatever.

I can see that as the customer you might have something wrong with
the dish that is your problem, but as you are RENTING the box from
them, if it goes wrong they should always be repairing/replacing it
FOC.

But you're not renting the box from them. You may be for the first year or
so but the box becomes yours after the initial 12-month contract (or
whatever length of contract it is). If I said tomorrow that I wanted to quit
Sky, they wouldn't send someone round to collect the box or ask me to post
it back to them. I could, if I wanted to, put it on Ebay and sell it. IMHO
the £65 to fix whatever problem you may have is good value.

Brian wrote:
tim.... wrote:
"Brian" wrote in message
...
Derek G. wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 10:53:44 +0100, "dennis@home"
wrote:


Its a marketing ploy..

It may very well be but AFAIAC it's costing them sales.

They want you to use all their services so they can make more
cash. The phone service is actually a cheap thing to supply and
people pay quite a bit to use it so profits are high.

I don't know how you decided VM was cheaper than sky though, it
isn't for me.


I pay £71 to Sky for the full bag of mashings inc. 1 HD box plus 1
sky+ box. + £9.00 /month for maintenance of the kit (free with
Virgin)

What's this £9/month for maintenance? I've never heard of that and
we've been with Sky for over 10 years (IIRC). If anything goes wrong
badly enough to need an engineer we just call Sky who, for a one-off
charge of £65, do whatever is necessary to get it working again,
whether that be a new dish, new cabling, new (refurb) box or
whatever.

I can see that as the customer you might have something wrong with
the dish that is your problem, but as you are RENTING the box from
them, if it goes wrong they should always be repairing/replacing it
FOC.

But you're not renting the box from them. You may be for the first
year or so but the box becomes yours after the initial 12-month
contract (or whatever length of contract it is). If I said tomorrow
that I wanted to quit Sky, they wouldn't send someone round to
collect the box or ask me to post it back to them. I could, if I
wanted to, put it on Ebay and sell it. IMHO the £65 to fix whatever
problem you may have is good value.

It's certainly better value than spending £9 - £12 per month on a
'maintenance contract'.

--
Kev

In article ,
Derek G. wrote:

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on
everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking
one pay for it anyway?

I already have 3 phonelines into the house on long contracts.

It seems illogical to me for VM to avoidably add cost to their
product. If they wanted a higher price for their service rather than
bundling a compulsory phone they should simply increase the price.


It doesn't always work like that. I've had broadband with them (and before
when they were NTL, and before that when they were Cable&Wireless) starting
with the 150k service that was amazing (no ADSL offering back then), through
600k, 1M, 5M, 10M and now 50M. Tempted to move to the 100M service soon.

I just had the broadband service, but at some point (probably about 5 years
ago) it became *cheaper* to take a tv box in the bedroom that I didn't want
than to just have the broadband.

Sometimes it works out cheaper to take the whole lot than to pay BT for
line rental. Of course, they screw you royally for call charges... not an
issue for us as we rarely use it but something to be careful of. Also,
watch out for caller ID - free on BT, 2.50 a month on VM.

I suspect their main driver for getting people to take the phoneline is that
most people will move from BT and remove their BT line. That makes moving
away from VM broadband a whole lot more complex as you need to coordinate
BT reconnecting you along with all the other stuff...

Darren

On Mon, 9 May 2011 18:48:35 +0100, Brian wrote:

But you're not renting the box from them. You may be for the first year
or so but the box becomes yours after the initial 12-month contract (or
whatever length of contract it is).

That's certainly the impression I have but then I've not looked at a
Sky contract ever. Only paid £20 once for a Freesat from Sky card.

IMHO the £65 to fix whatever problem you may have is good value.

How often do you need to call someone out? More than once every 7
months or so the £9/month becomes the better option. But I guess a
call out is far far less frequent than that...

--
Cheers
Dave.

Dave Liquorice wrote:
On Mon, 9 May 2011 18:48:35 +0100, Brian wrote:

But you're not renting the box from them. You may be for the first
year or so but the box becomes yours after the initial 12-month
contract (or whatever length of contract it is).

That's certainly the impression I have but then I've not looked at a
Sky contract ever. Only paid £20 once for a Freesat from Sky card.

IMHO the £65 to fix whatever problem you may have is good value.

How often do you need to call someone out? More than once every 7
months or so the £9/month becomes the better option. But I guess a
call out is far far less frequent than that...

In our case, twice in the last 10 years :-)

"Ret." wrote in message
...

Last time my Thomson HD box failed, I paid the £65 and was provided with a
brand-new Amstrad box and also had the LNB replaced the dish realigned. I
understand that if you threaten to leave Sky they will come and sort
things out foc rather than risk losing a customer.

Fixed free and half price for 6 months if you say the right things.

"Ret." wrote in message
...


It's certainly better value than spending £9 - £12 per month on a
'maintenance contract'.

Especially as if it goes wrong again within the year they will fix it free.

"John" wrote in message
...

8

Don't be silly Timothy, of course you're NOT renting the box from them -
after the end of the initial contract, that is. If I wanted to, I could
quit the monthly subscription and either (a) sell the box as I said
earlier - if I was renting it from them, they'd want their property back,
surely? or (b) buy a "Freesat from Sky" card at a one-off charge (about
£20 IIRC) to put into the box instead of the monthly subscription card.
Same box, no monthly payments for programmes or for rent of the box.

You never rent the sky box.
Its yours to do what you like with.
However there is a 12 moth contract so its a bit silly to ebay it for the
first 12 months.

You don't need the freesat from sky card, the Sky card will do the free
stuff even if you drop the monthly payments.

On May 9, 8:29*am, "Ret." wrote:
Derek G. wrote:
Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre optic
broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

I am paying £74.50 pm for Sky HD TV (including movie channels), Sky
Broadband with unlimited downloads, and Sky Talk with free 'anytime' calls
and free calls to most European countries, USA and Canada (including line
rental).

Having Sky broadband also means that I can connect the router to my Sky Box
and get 'Anytime plus' with pages of movies and programmes available to
download and watch 'on demand' free of charge.

I reckon that's pretty good value compared with other 'packages' I've looked
at - and I've been more than happy with Sky broadband service as well.

VM TV may be cheaper than Sky TV - but then they don't have as many channels
and don't have quite a number of the more popular channels either. I
suppose, in relation to TV, a lot depends upon what channels/programmes you
watch.

--
Kev

You need to get out more.

MBQ

Man at B&Q wrote:
On May 9, 8:29 am, "Ret." wrote:
Derek G. wrote:
Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre
optic broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

I am paying £74.50 pm for Sky HD TV (including movie channels), Sky
Broadband with unlimited downloads, and Sky Talk with free 'anytime'
calls and free calls to most European countries, USA and Canada
(including line rental).

Having Sky broadband also means that I can connect the router to my
Sky Box and get 'Anytime plus' with pages of movies and programmes
available to download and watch 'on demand' free of charge.

I reckon that's pretty good value compared with other 'packages'
I've looked at - and I've been more than happy with Sky broadband
service as well.

VM TV may be cheaper than Sky TV - but then they don't have as many
channels and don't have quite a number of the more popular channels
either. I suppose, in relation to TV, a lot depends upon what
channels/programmes you watch.

--
Kev

You need to get out more.

LOL!

--
Kev